Putting your rage to good use... (and I'm not talking about sending hate mail to Katie Price)

If all else fails, we can always empty the prisons for entertainment purposes. 
With our love of reality TV, I'm AMAZED that nobody has started a real life 
Running Man competition. It can only be a matter of time...

A recent survey found that 62% of Britons would not feel confident stepping in to prevent a group of 14-year-olds vandalising a bus stop, compared to 48% across Western Europe as a whole.

The study came from the Royal Society for the Arts, which has volunteered the suggestion to train park keepers, public transport workers, street cleaners, caretakers, and teachers so they are prepared to deal with rowdy youths.  

Ben Rogers (author of this study) apparently blamed our collective unwillingness to intervene on a “loosening of social ties” caused by factors such as women going to work and increased immigration. That’s funny, I always thought it was the fear of getting stabbed in the face. Does it for me. 

We have plenty of yobs who are spoiling for a fight, so why don’t we look on the bright side and harness all that aggression into something useful?  Just train up the most violent plebs into law enforcement officers so they can channel their natural belligerence against the cretins who so rarely pick on anyone their own size. 

Bullies confident in the fact that nobody who values their lives will dare admonish them, will have a rude awakening when they are “dealt with” by mobsters whose criminal records they can only dream of. (OK, this is starting to sound like a futuristic Arnie /  Sly / Bruce movie.)

Of course many of these people will also be mentally ill, as shown by the tributes to “legend” Raoul Moat. Never mind getting facebook to ban pages like this, I’d fix it so that you could track down every fan, DNA swab them and keep their details on file. And because they’d undoubtedly be too stupid to read the small print, I would write a disclaimer into facebook so they would have given their full consent to this.  

(Sometimes I surprise myself with how right wing I’ve become... however, all those FB friends of mine who describe their political stance as ”liberal” are always the first to invite me to groups called “paedophiles should have their throats cut and their toenails pulled out by wolves,” so perhaps there is a little confusion about the dictionary definition of “liberal”?)

Back in 1911, a criminologist named Arthur McDonald suggested that newspapers and books should stop publishing the names of criminals, as “this would lessen the hope for glory, renown or notoriety, which is a great incentive to such crimes.” 

In the meantime, watch Eden Lake. It's a brilliant, British made film with a horribly realistic portrayal of "Hoodie" culture. I was strangely depressed for about two weeks after watching it, but I do recommend it.